Super Bowl fans vote, tweet for the ads

Marketers get active in attempts to sway attention to products

By Mae Anderson
Associated Press

Published: Thursday, Jan. 31 2013 7:10 p.m. MST

This undated screenshot provided by Audi shows the company's Super Bowl advertisement. Audi's 60-second ad in the first quarter, with an ending voted on by viewers, shows a boy gaining confidence from driving his father's Audi to the prom, kissing the prom queen and getting decked by the prom king. (AP Photo/Audi) (Associated Press)

NEW YORK — You don't have to be a football player to be a part of the action on Super Bowl Sunday.

Coca-Cola is asking people to vote for an online match between three groups competing in a desert for a Coke on Game Day. Pepsi and Toyota are using viewers' photos in their ads. Audi let people choose the end of its Super Bowl ad, while Lincoln based its spot on more 6,000 tweets from fans about their road trips.

These are just some ways advertisers have found to get viewers involved in the excitement on game day by luring them online. And they're going well beyond encouraging fans to tweet or "like" their ads on websites like Twitter Facebook.

They're trying to get the most of their Super Bowl ads — which cost nearly $4 million for a 30-second spot — by drawing people online. Companies that advertise during the Super Bowl get a 20 percent increase in Web traffic on the day of the game, according to the analytics arm of software maker Adobe. They also have a higher online audience than average in the week after.

This undated screenshot provided by PepsiCo shows the Super Bowl advertisement for PepsiCo's Frito-Lay's Doritos. PepsiCo's"Crash the Super Bowl" ads are back for the seventh straight year. Two 30-second commercials made by consumers will make it on the air. Fans voted for one winner and Doritos chose the other.(AP Photo PepsiCo) (Associated Press)

"We're seeing better and more unique ways of getting people involved," said Robert Kolt, an advertising instructor at Michigan State University. "You want people to be engaged."

PepsiCo, which is sponsoring the Super Bowl halftime show, said its goal was to create buzz online with a monthlong campaign that went well-beyond a voiceover saying "brought to you by Pepsi."

For about two weeks, Pepsi asked fans online and via a digital billboard in New York's Times Square to submit their photos for a chance to appear in a 30-second "intro" spot to air right before the halftime show.

The company said the effort was more popular than it expected. Pepsi planned to get 2,000 photos, but got 100,000 instead. About 1,000 photos were chosen to be a part of the intro. They will be stitched together in a "flipbook" style video that appears to show one person jumping to the tune of "Countdown," a song by Beyonce, who is performing during the halftime show.

This undated screenshot provided by PepsiCo shows the Super Bowl advertisement for PepsiCo's Frito-Lay's Doritos. PepsiCo's"Crash the Super Bowl" ads are back for the seventh straight year. Two 30-second commercials made by consumers will make it on the air. Fans voted for one winner and Doritos chose the other.(AP Photo PepsiCo) (Associated Press)

"We don't just want (viewers) on pepsi.com, we want them telling their friends 'I just did something with Pepsi,' " said Angelique Krembs, vice president of trademark Pepsi marketing. "You want the friend to tell the friend about Pepsi. You don't want Pepsi to always be the one talking about Pepsi."

The storyline for the 30-second ad, which was developed from 6,117 tweets, features rapper Joseph "Rev Run" Simmons and Wil Wheaton, who acted in the iconic science-fiction series "Star Trek: The Next Generation."

"We drove passed an alpaca farm, a few of them were meandering on the highway and my sister screamed, 'It's the Alpacalypse!,' " reads one tweet.

This undated screenshot provided by PepsiCo shows the Super Bowl advertisement for PepsiCo's Frito-Lay's Doritos. PepsiCo's"Crash the Super Bowl" ads are back for the seventh straight year. Two 30-second commercials made by consumers will make it on the air. Fans voted for one winner and Doritos chose the other.(AP Photo PepsiCo) (Associated Press)

"Drove through a movie set in Palmdale, Calif., and didn't realize it. Got out and enjoyed the catered food," reads another tweet.

Coca-Cola created an online game that pits a troupe of showgirls, biker-style "badlanders" and cowboys against each other in a race to find a Coke in the desert. Viewers are encouraged to vote for their favorite group and set up obstacles that delay other groups on CokeChase.com. Obstacles include a traffic light or getting a pizza delivered, which waste time.

The game is alluded to in a Super Bowl ad and the winning group — which has the most "for" votes and the least "obstacle" votes will be announced after the game. Coke will also give a free Coke to the first 50,000 people who vote. The campaign is more interactive than Coca-Cola's online effort last year, which featured a real-time animation of Polar Bears reacting to what was happening during the Super Bowl.

Audi let viewers choose one of three possible endings for its game day spot by voting online on Jan. 25 for 24 hours.

The ad shows a boy who gets enough confidence from driving his father's Audi to the prom to kiss his dream girl, even though he is then decked by her boyfriend. Audi allowed people to vote for one of three potential endings for the ad.

In one ending, the boy drives home alone, triumphant. Another ending shows him palling around with friends. The third shows the boy going home and finding a prom picture of his parents in which his dad has a similar black eye.